knowing that your door is always open
by Ashen Key
Summary: It was a dark and stormy night, when in wandered a bedraggled Russian assassin looking for a shower - and a set of clothes to steal.


**A/N: Many thanks to both Gabby and TL for beta-ing, and additional thanks to TL for letting me steal ideas when I got stuck. Clint having hearing loss is taken from the comics. **

**Title and lyrics come from Glen Campbell's song "Gentle On My Mind"**

_**knowing that your door is always open **_

It's the kind of dark, stormy night that would normally find him out in the middle of it, watching some target or other, getting to know a Person of Interest better than their spouse from behind a sniper rifle. But tonight the world is smiling; the only sound his work phone has made is the beep of a full battery, and he's on the couch with his guitar playing old Country, the type with a liberal shot of Cash.

The mood is slightly ruined by a knock on the door.

No one hit the buzzer at ground level, so it could be a neighbour. It could not be, too, so he makes his approach silent. Then, after checking the hallway monitor, Clint opens his door to a vision straight from one of his adolescent fantasies. The woman standing in front of him is all smoky-eyed and tousled crimson curls and ridiculous stilettos, wearing a soaked black cocktail dress that is hugging every curve.

She's _also_ sporting matching bruises on her wrists and a deeply unimpressed, wet cat expression, so Clint just shakes his head with a huffed laugh and lets the door swing wide.

"You know, Nat, if this keeps happening, you're gonna have to keep some of your own clothes here."

Natasha takes in his appearance (old shirt, old jeans, bare feet, the hearing aids he only wears when he's not going out) with a barely noticeable glance, and strolls past him (too weary for a saunter, not angry enough for a stalk).

"I can do that," she says, calmly enough, leaving her stilettos by the door. There's a run in her stockings, and an angry scratch underneath as an explanation. "Do you have anything clean I can borrow? And a towel?"

"If you use the last of my shampoo, you owe me," is all he says, because seriously, Nat? Ask a stupid question.

He knows his sweatpants will fit because of _last_ time.

– –

By the time Natasha wanders out of the bathroom, he's back on his couch and idly strumming his guitar. She's dressed in a pair of his sweatpants (the same pair as that infamous last time, which she is _not _living down), and a t-shirt, with her hair wrapped in a towel. Because he's not an idiot, Clint makes utterly no comment on the obvious lack of a bra. Instead, his fingers pause on the strings and he watches as she curls in on herself on his armchair. The woman has an amazing level of poise, given that the faded red t-shirt is clashing with the brown towel-turned-turban.

"How," he says at last, "on _earth_ did you walk in those shoes?"

"Practice," she says, glancing at him with green eyes the shade of old coke bottles before continuing to look around. _Survey her domain,_ Clint's brain suggests, because it's probably best to operate on the theory that Natasha had never been a small child, but an overly devious kitten.

The look in her eyes is getting distinctly more feline by the minute, so he asks, only a _little_ wary, "What?"

"That dress," Natasha says, slowly, unwinding towel and hair, "was dry-clean only."

"Ah."

"I'm claiming it as damages."

If his fingers hadn't already been still, they certainly would have stilled at her announcement. "Good luck with that," he says, because he knows better than to tell her when something is futile.

Then again, she's just fiendish enough that she might actually win this round of red-tape warfare.

"What were you playing when I walked out?" she asks, starting to work on the knots in her hair with his brush (the brush, he knows, will not survive.)

"_Folsom Prison Blues_."

"Never heard of it."

Clint looks up, sharply. "Say what?"

Natasha glances at him. "I've never heard of it."

"You've never heard of- _have_ you heard of Johnny Cash?"

"No."

"...I thought you were trained to blend into American society."

She raises her eyebrows, but she's looking kind of amused, so he has no idea if she's fucking with him or not. Matters aren't helped when she says, "Is it relevant?"

Clint is smooth in his response: he splutters at her, which only deepens the amusement visible in the corner of her mouth. "_Yes_," he says, when he can manage it. "It- did you learn about _any_ Country music?"

"I think my teacher for that semester had a disliking," Natasha says, as if she went to merely a weird school instead of however the hell you'd classify the Red Room.

"As your fellow agent and your _friend, _this situation needs to be fixed," he says, and that? That expression that flitted across her face? That was _nearly a grin. _

She's almost certainly fucking with him now, no matter how genuine her ignorance.

"So, you're going to teach me about Johnny Cash?"

"We'll work up to him," Clint says, and strums the strings for a couple moments in thought. He grins. "I've got someone else in mind, ease you in nice and slow."

Natasha raises her eyebrows.

"_It's knowing that your door is always open_," he sings, "_And your path is free to walk/ That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag/ Rolled up and stashed behind your couch._"

She is giving him a Look, but it's an amused Look, so he smirks at her, and keeps on singing.


End file.
